Wyoming Briefs 10-19-23

Gillette woman rescued after 100-foot fall in the Big Horns

GREYBULL (WNE) - For the second time this fall, Big Horn County Search & Rescue team members were summoned on Sunday afternoon to rescue an amateur photographer who slipped while taking photos of Shell Falls and fell approximately 100 feet.

The initial report, which came in at around 4 p.m., described the photographer as a 50-year-old woman. According to a S&R social media post, the first team members on scene determined that she had slid down an embankment, dropped over a cliff and disappeared out of sight.

The woman's traveling companion, also a woman from Gillette of about the same age, was able to make her way down to her friend and was with her at the bottom when S& R members arrived, according to Big Horn County Sheriff Ken Blackburn.

Technical rope team members from Big Horn County S& R, one a paramedic for Cody Regional Ambulance, set up a rope system and rappelled to the subject's location near the bottom of the canyon. They set up a rope haul system to extract the patient from the canyon.

The patient was placed in a full body vacuum mattress and litter system, and a haul team brought her to the top. One rope technician was lowered back down to the second woman who was brought up as well.

The patient was initially loaded onto a waiting First Flight of Wyoming helicopter, but she later chose to be transported by ground ambulance to Three Rivers Health.

Blackburn was unable to provide an update on her condition, saying only that she appeared to have suffered a shoulder injury.

This story was published on October 19, 2023.

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Sundance man gets 10 years in child porn case

SUNDANCE (WNE) - Charles Flint of Sundance has been sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography.

The sentence was imposed on October 2 by U.S. District Court Judge Alan B. Johnson. Flint pleaded guilty to the charges in July.

Flint was arrested earlier this year and charged with four felony counts of possession of child porn after the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children received information on October 24, 2022 from Microsoft Online Operations that a user of Microsoft Bing Images was in possession of suspected child pornography.

This information was generated as a cyber tip and referred to the Wyoming Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

The agent assigned to investigate learned that Flint had felony convictions for sexual assault on a child and internet luring of a child in the State of Colorado in 2007. He also found that Flint is a registered sex offender in Wyoming.

In a recorded interview, Flint allegedly said there would be child pornography on his laptop and that he obtained it from the internet and saved the images to his laptop. During the search of Flint's Sundance residence, agents discovered the laptop computer that contained several images of child pornography.

This story was published on October 19, 2023.

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Wyoming senators back legislation to reimpose sanctions on Iran

CHEYENNE (WNE) - On Wednesday, U.S. Sens. John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, both R-Wyo., expressed their full support for Israel amid the war by cosponsoring legislation to freeze Iranian funds and also reimpose sanctions against Iran, which has a history of funding Hamas.

Barrasso and Lummis cosponsored the Revoke Iranian Funding Act of 2023, led by U.S. Sen.Tim Scott, R-S.C., which would freeze the $6 billion the Biden administration released to Iran on Sept. 11 during a prisoner swap.This legislation would prevent the Iranian regime from accessing and using the funds, currently held in Qatar, to finance terrorist attacks against Israel or any other nation.

"America must stop rewarding terrorist regimes with legitimacy and cash,"Barrasso said in a news release."The world is seeing firsthand the destruction and chaos inflicted by Iranian-backed terrorists. Helping Iran get additional funds is a grave mistake.We must block the Iranian regime from accessing accounts across the globe."

"For far too long, this administration has made our nation look weak on the world stage,"Lummis said in the release."Releasing any of the $6 billion to Iran as part of a U.S.-Iranian prisoner swap is not only naïve, but dangerous.The Biden administration is freeing up funds within the Iranian government that they can then use to sponsor terrorism. This legislation will increase transparency and prevent these funds from falling into the Iranian regime's hands."

This week, Barrasso and Lummis joined 97 of their colleagues in introducing a resolution to show their support for Israel.

This story was published on October 19, 2023.